Monday, January 13, 2014

January 13

The city is dirty and grey these days: last week's deep freeze and its attendant brilliant blue skies seem to have disappeared with the warming wind, a wind that brought clouds and fog and rain along with it. The sidewalks are like luge runs, although markedly less pristine. I walked through the park on the way to the post office this afternoon, head bowed against the rain, dodging puddles. I'm uneasy on that path now; the branches overhead whistled and groaned in the wind, and the stacks of branches that came down during the ice storm weren't exactly reassuring. It doesn't look like a single tree was spared, and I'm afraid there's more where that came from.

All I could think of this afternoon was visiting Point Pleasant Park the spring after Hurricane Juan, walking around one hot breathless day in early May, staring listlessly at tree stumps, standing in what should have been a forest but with hardly any canopy to shelter us from the sun. We're in for something similar this spring, I fear.

But that is months away, and trees, like humans, can bounce back from much worse. Meantime, I'm stocking up on amaryllises and lilacs and tulips to stave off the the winter grey-blues, and collecting recipes to give me reasons to turn the oven on when the weather turns cold again. I'm in the mood for something tart and bright – what's your favourite lemon bar recipe?